The Exodus from Egypt

Roberts had not yet been to Egypt when he painted this; he travelled there ten years later. He builds an endless city of colonnades, and through it the people move out in a stream that has no end either.

The picture made Roberts known when it was shown in London in 1829, and it soon spread as an engraving. He had begun as a scene painter for the theatre, and the architecture is stage design on the largest scale.